The Importance of Developing Emotional Intelligence in Children and Adults

5 يوليو 2024

Educating the emotional intelligence of children in our world is as important as teaching literacy, math, and science. To prepare the future generation, we need to help the young people of the future understand their feelings and learn how to deal with them effectively early in life.

The importance of teaching emotional intelligence to children:

Emotional intelligence is an essential skill that is not taught often enough or in practical ways in schools. however, emotional intelligence will help our children adapt and succeed in real life. Our children need to learn how to pay attention to how their bodies and brains respond to different events.

Knowing these things will allow them to prepare for stressful situations. Every day we hear about more cases of bullying, low self-esteem, and suicide. Teaching children emotional intelligence practices helps control their feelings when necessary, which helps to mitigate the conflicts they face.

The role of parents in developing children's emotional intelligence:

There are simple things that parents can do every day to improve children's emotional intelligence. Parents can ask their children questions and guide them in making decisions about how they react to different situations. We usually say things like: "How was your day?" So instead, try asking your child, “How do you feel?” “Why do you feel that way?” to increase their emotional distinctiveness and ability to express what they feel.

If your child is reluctant to talk about their feelings, give them a journal and encourage them to write down their feelings. Children need to identify and express the emotions they are experiencing, so encourage them to share their journals with you so that you can guide them in choosing appropriate ways to respond to difficult situations and challenges.

Suggestions to help children understand their feelings:

Helping your child recognize and mitigate the voice that speaks to them from the inside can initially appear as a coping mechanism. The voice of internal criticism often weakens confidence and affects health, which makes the child feel ashamed, criticized, or frustrated. This criticism can be simple or negative self-talk that tells the person they are not good enough or discourages them.
To eliminate the internal critic, children can be taught practices that qualify them to notice and express their body's reactions to their feelings. They will learn to develop an inner voice based on self-awareness, rather than a voice that promotes internal criticism, by expanding their ability to observe and express what they feel.

Children can also learn to turn their passive thinking methods into positive ones, whether by applying emotional intelligence strategies or cognitive behaviors. They can also enhance learning to see their experiences from a positive perspective by helping them discover internal criticism and rewrite what they are going through observation instead of judging themselves. Then, when they have negative thoughts, they will be well qualified to follow one of those emotional intelligence practices.

How Identify the emotions that cause stress in your children?

As a parent, identify the emotions that cause stress in your children and help them determine how they will respond to them by:

1. Need to take action:

Teach your child to resolve things quickly and not to worry about them.

2. Need for clarity:

This often happens within human relationships, so tell your child to be clear and then act.

3. Facing a new situation:

Tell your child they will face events that they can not control, and that they should look at things more largely.

Teach your child to relax, breathe deeply, and think that some things are not as essential as we believe. Emotional intelligence helps the child to increase their self-awareness and ability to deal with emotions. When the child can communicate well with what they feel, it allows them to change their feelings in difficult situations, and then they can focus on learning and acting as a child.

As much as children need to know emotional intelligence practices, we also need adults with emotional intelligence, especially those who are involved in childhood development and education, such as parents and teachers who are best at developing children's emotional intelligence.

Parents and teachers face a lot of daily stressors that can lead to internal suffering and fatigue when stressors accumulate. Stress can affect our relationships with ourselves and with others, including the relationships parents have with their children, teachers with their students, and the lack of self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, or relationship management leads to emotional dysfunction and hinders us in building satisfying relationships.

Developing self-awareness and self-management skills helps relieve fatigue from daily stressors. Other positive side effects include increased satisfaction with our roles as parents and teachers, pleasant relationships with children, and overall life satisfaction. Adults who develop emotional intelligence contribute to their student's academic achievement.

What distinguishes an emotionally intelligent parent or teacher?

Understand, appreciate, respect, and use their emotions to solve problems, make decisions, and help children do the same.
Learn how to regulate their stress, manage their uncomfortable feelings, and help children do the same.
Recognize how to focus on pleasant feelings, use them in education more efficiently, motivate themselves, and inspire children to learn.
Understand their abilities and identify their strengths and weaknesses, with the ability to identify children's strengths and areas for improvement.
The ability to build effective and supportive relationships through trust, respect, and attention.
Negotiate solutions to conflicts involving children.
Understand and respect the emotions, feelings, views, and opinions of others.
Establish firm but respectful boundaries with children.

In an interview published in “Early Childhood Today,” author Daniel Golemanwas asked what teachers can do to help students develop emotional intelligence: “Teachers should feel comfortable talking about emotions; That's part of emotional literacy; There's a set of skills that we can all develop, including the ability to read, understand, and respond appropriately to one's own and other's emotions.

Emotional literacy involves increasing the responsibility of schools to help socialize children, and this challenging task requires two fundamental changes: that teachers go beyond their traditional job and that people in society become engaged in schools as active and effective participants in children's learning and as individual communicators.

There is no area in which the ability of the teacher is more important than this area, as the way the teacher deals with their students is an example of a real lesson in emotional competence or even lack of it, when one student interacts with the teacher, 20 or 30 others learn a lesson. These lessons can be helpful, such as learning to control emotions or identify feelings in the early school years.

You can also teach the simplest emotions, such as feelings of happiness and anger in young children, and then talk about more complex emotions, such as jealousy, pride, and guilt. The basic idea that children should learn about emotions is that it is okay to face all feelings, but some reactions are fine."

Adults who are aware of their emotions and able to deal with their own stressors can notice children's feelings and help them change their feelings to achieve a goal or improve their emotional state. They do this by showing their sympathetic interest in them, which in turn helps emotionally intelligent parents and teachers to be more engaged and motivated at work and to have an increased sense of job satisfaction and achievement on a personal level.

When adults cannot understand their feelings, regulate their emotions, manage their stress, or even build good relationships with others, they cannot teach children how to do this. Children who talk about feelings with teachers and parents have a better understanding of emotions compared to children who do not speak. On the other hand, neglect in education is associated with poor social and emotional skills and emotional balance.

The multiplier effect of teachers on children's lives has wide-ranging impacts on society. Because teachers and parents create one of the most critical impacts on children's lives, they also need to develop their emotional intelligence.